Sanitation & Hygiene

In Kenya, as in much of Africa, the lack of safe drinking water causes many severe problems including dehydration, starvation and disease.  The daily chore of fetching water is no small task in rural Kenya, and young women often walk as far as ten miles to collect what water they can from a polluted, dirty, hand-dug well, full of parasites and bacteria.  These wells are also structurally dangerous and often collapse when they get deep enough.

There is high mortality rate among children under five years old is primarily due to waterborne diseases such as gastroenteritis, diarrhea, malaria, and amoebic dysentery, to name just a few.  Contamination from human and livestock waste is also a major cause of water- related diseases, despite the sanitary disposal methods of most of the population.  Flies and other disease-carrying insects are drawn to unsanitary water sites and compound the risk of infection.  All of these problems are exacerbated by the fact that economic hardship, inadequate education, and lack of public transport prevent many individuals from seeking healthcare in the early stages of an illness.

Experts and advocates from humanitarian organizations stressed the need to provide adequate water, sanitation and hygiene facilities and instruction for school children in the developing world. Two out of three schools in the developing world lack decent toilets, according to UNICEF. The World Health Organization estimates that 272 million school days are lost each year due to diarrhea and some 400 million school-aged children worldwide have worms.